@livinglava,
livinglava wrote:All I see in the insulting of Trump like you posted above is the angry spitting of people who can't contemplate the possibility that austerity could be good for people and good for the planet.
Not so fast...
A running list of how President Trump is changing environmental policy
The Trump administration has promised vast changes to U.S. science and environmental policy—and we’re tracking them here as they happen.
BY MICHAEL GRESHKO, LAURA PARKER, BRIAN CLARK HOWARD, DANIEL STONE, AND ALEJANDRA BORUNDA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 9, 2019
The Trump Administration’s tumultuous presidency has brought a flurry of changes—both realized and anticipated—to U.S. environmental policy. Many of the actions roll back Obama-era policies that aimed to curb climate change and limit environmental pollution, while others threaten to limit federal funding for science and the environment.
It’s a lot to keep track of, so National Geographic will be maintaining an abbreviated timeline of the Trump Administration’s environmental actions and policy changes, as well as reactions to them. We will update this article as news develops.
Editor's Note: This story was originally published on March 31, 2017, and was last updated on January 9, 2019.
TRUMP NOMINATES ANDREW WHEELER TO PERMANENT EPA JOB
January 9, 2019
Though the federal government remains shut down, President Donald Trump officially nominated Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler to the post on a permanent basis on Wednesday. Wheeler had served in the acting role since July, when former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned after intense media scrutiny and ethics scandals (see below).
Confirmed by the Senate as acting administrator, Wheeler will now need an additional confirmation for the permanent job.
The former coal lobbyist has largely continued Pruitt's legacy in office. In August Wheeler released a proposed rule that would
roll back fuel-efficiency and pollution standards for vehicles, as well as limit California's ability to set its own car standards. Wheeler also unveiled a proposed replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan that would let states set their own rules. In December Wheeler rolled out a weakened redo of the Waters of the United States rule, which would limit oversight of a range of activities from farming to industry.
Trump said Wheeler has "done a fantastic job" in his acting role.
“For me, there is no greater responsibility than protecting human health and the environment, and I look forward to carrying out this essential task on behalf of the American public,” Wheeler said in a statement upon his nomination.
“Wheeler has advanced the same destructive agenda as Pruitt, but without sideshow antics slowing him down,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “If he’s confirmed, Wheeler would surpass Pruitt as the most dangerous EPA administrator of all time. The Senate must not give him the chance.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ROLLS BACK OBAMA-ERA COAL RULES
December 6, 2018
The Trump administration rolled back another Obama-era climate rule when it announced Thursday
it will lift some restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants.
The change, intended to spur construction of new coal plants, comes as scientists warned world leaders attending the UN’s annual climate conference that the consequences of unchecked global warming will be severe and costly. The meeting opened with a warning from Polish President Andrzej Duda: “We are trying to save the world from annihilation…”
The easing of coal rules was announced by the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who said the move would “rescind excessive burdens on America’s energy providers and level the playing field so that new energy technologies can be part of America’s future.”
Proposed changes to the New Source Performance Standards would no longer require that plants meet strict goals of achieving emissions equal to or less than what plants would have achieved with carbon capture and storage technology.
The Obama administration rule, adopted in 2015, restricted carbon dioxide pollution from future power plants and prompted a strong pushback from the coal industry that complained it inhibited new plant construction. Equipment required under the Obama rule was expensive, and criticized by the energy industry as technologically unproven.
The announcement also came the day after the U.S. Energy Information Administration released figures for coal consumption in 2018 that show a four percent decline from 2017 and the lowest level since 1979. The largest consumer of coal is the electric power sector, and the decline reflects the closing of coal plants and competition from natural gas and renewable energy sources. Energy analysts have predicted that coal is unlikely to recover in the energy market it once dominated.
Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, who appeared by Wheeler’s side at the EPA press conference, praised the proposal because it will make it feasible for new plant construction.
Clare Lockwood, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the proposal an “act of flailing, die-hard climate denial.”
INTERIOR EASES DRILLING CONTROLS PROTECTING SAGE GROUSE
December 6, 2018
The U.S. Interior Department moved forward Thursday with
plans to ease restrictions on oil and gas drilling across millions of acres of protected habitat in 11 western states where the imperiled greater sage grouse lives.
Documents released by the Bureau of Land Management show the Trump administration’s intention to open more public lands to lease and allow waivers for drilling in the grouse breeding grounds. The plan is the next step in the administration’s efforts to rework Obama administration protections for the grouse. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had promised to remove obstacles to drilling. Protections of the ground-dwelling grouse have long been viewed by the energy industry as an obstacle to development.
“I completely believe that these plans are leaning forward on conservation of sage grouse,” Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt told the Associated Press. “Do they do it in exactly the same way, no? We made some change in the plans and got rid of some things that are simply not necessary.”
Conservationists and wildlife advocates vigorously disagreed and warned that drilling could further threaten the birds’ survival. The sage grouse once numbered in the millions. The population is now estimated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service between 200,000 and 500,000.
“David Bernhardt spent years in the private sector advancing policy goals of special interests who profit off our public lands. Despite his clear conflicts, Zinke put him in charge of ripping apart the plans just to help those very industries that Bernhardt used to work for,” Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the Western Values Project, a Montana-based nonprofit focused on public lands protections, said in a statement.
The administration’s plans would modify protections in seven states, including Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, California, Idaho, and Oregon. The documents released Thursday include environmental analysis of the changes in each state plan. The public can comment on that analysis before a final decision, expected to be announced in early 2019.
NOAA GREEN LIGHTS SEISMIC AIRGUN BLASTS FOR OIL AND GAS DRILLING
November 30, 2018
Five oil and gas companies have been given the green light to use seismic airgun blasts to search for lucrative oil and gas deposits that could be buried in the sea floor from New Jersey to Florida.
The proposal was shot down by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in 2017 after it was deemed unsafe for marine life, but a recent review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded the blasts could be done without significantly threatening the population status of threatened or endangered species.
The basis of NOAA's investigation was to determine whether or not the activity would violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Large marine mammals like whales and dolphin use sound communicating, feeding, and mating, meaning the blasts could impact all three of those essential activities.
KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE BLOCKED BY FEDERAL JUDGE
November 8, 2018
A federal judge in Montana blocked construction from beginning on the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,200-mile-long project that would deliver 800,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the Alberta, Canada, oil sands to refineries in the U.S. Pipeline operator TransCanada first proposed the pipeline in 2008; the Obama administration rejected its permit application in 2015, citing concerns about the pipeline's impact on climate. Trump reversed that decision shortly after he was inaugurated in 2017. (What is the Keystone XL pipeline?)
Judge Brian Morris wrote that the Trump administration had “simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change” in order to move the project forward. In so doing it had violated its responsibility under the Administrative Procedures Act to provide a “reasoned explanation” for the changed decision. The Trump administration, Morris wrote, had failed to fully consider the climate, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of the project—neither incorporating the latest science on climate change nor the impact on indigenous cultural resources in the pipeline's path.
The pipeline has been controversial since it was first proposed, with many environmental groups and indigenous communities strongly opposed to its construction. Construction work had been scheduled to begin in 2019. How long it will now be delayed is uncertain. The administration could appeal the ruling.
YOUTH CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUIT DELAYED
November 8, 2018
The trial in a climate change lawsuit brought by 21 youths has been delayed again, after a federal appeals court granted the Trump administration’s request that it consider halting the case.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday gave the youths’ lawyers 15 days to respond to the government’s petition. In a meeting with lawyers, District Court Judge Ann Aiken indicated she will promptly set a new trial date once the appeals court lifts its temporary stay, according to Meg Ward, a spokeswoman for the youths.
The trial had been set to begin on October 29 in Eugene, but was delayed after the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to intervene and halt it. On November 2, the justices refused and advised the government to return to the Ninth Circuit, which it did on November 5.
Trump administration lawyers filed a rarely-used appeal that asks the appellate court to rule on the case before the lower court has heard it at trial.
SUPREME COURT REFUSES TO HALT YOUTHS' CLIMATE CHANGE SUIT
November 2, 2018
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to halt the trial in a case brought by 21 youths who sued the federal government for its role in causing global warming. The youths, many of whom live in regions already suffering the effects of climate change and extreme weather events, want a federal judge in Oregon to order the government to write a plan to address climate change.
The trial was to have begun October 29 in Eugene, but was delayed after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intercede and block the case.
In a three-page unsigned order, the justices advised the government to take its arguments back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and left open the possibility that the government court return to the Supreme Court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch said they would have granted the administration’s request. The other seven justices did not indicate how they decided the government’s appeal.
The justices noted the government’s description of the case as “based on an assortment of unprecedented legal theories, such as a substantive due process right to certain conditions, and an equal protection right to live in the same climate as enjoyed by prior generations.”
The order was the second time since July the justices denied the government’s effort to stop the case as premature.
Lawyers for the youths announced they would ask that the trial begin next week.
“The youth of our nation won an important decision today from the Supreme Court that shows even the most powerful government in the world must follow the rules and process of litigation in our democracy,” Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children’s Trust and the co-counsel in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The case of Juliana v. United States was filed in 2015 during the Obama administration. The youths’ suit contends that the federal government pursued energy policies that caused climate change even though it knew for more than a half-century that carbon emissions would destabilize the climate, and the failure to protect future generations from the effects of climate change violated their generations’ constitutional right to live in a “climate system capable of sustaining human life.”
Both the Obama and Trump administration lawyers have argued repeatedly in numerous appeals that the policy-making on climate change does not belong in court, but more properly in the realm of Congress and the federal agencies that write laws and government regulations. The youths “seek nothing less than a complete transformation of the American energy system–including the abandonment of fossil fuels–ordered by a single district court….” Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco wrote in a brief. He added: the “assertion of sweeping new fundamental rights to certain climate conditions has no basis in the nation’s history and tradition–and no place in federal court.”
In response to the government’s appeal, the youths’ lawyers argued that constitutional questions are traditionally addressed after trial, when a record of fact has been established, and not before. As to the potential injury, the lawyers wrote: “When a child suffers climate-induced flooding where the child sleeps, increased incidence of asthma attacks from climate-induced wildfire and smoke conditions in areas where the child exercises, dead coral reefs due to overly warm oceans where the child swims, and storm surges and rising seas perpetually attacking the barrier island where the child lives so that the child now routinely evacuates and experiences flooding in the child’s roads, home and school, those injuries are hardly generalized grievances.”
FIRST OFFSHORE OIL WELLS APPROVED FOR THE ARCTIC
October 24, 2018
After years of heated debate between conservationists and the petroleum industry about risks and rewards, the federally controlled waters of the U.S. Arctic are cleared to see their first oil and gas production wells. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a conditional permit to Houston-based Hilcorp to move forward with its Liberty Project, to begin drilling from an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea.
In announcing the approval, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said, “Responsibly developing our resources, in Alaska especially, will allow us to use our energy diplomatically to aid our allies and check our adversaries.”
But environmentalists are concerned that the region's harsh climate, and threatened wildlife, make the project a risky gamble.
“Opening the Arctic to offshore oil drilling is a disaster waiting to happen,” Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “This project sets us down a dangerous path of destroying the Arctic. An oil spill in the Arctic would be impossible to clean up and the region is already stressed by climate change.”
Hilcorp intends to move forward by creating a gravel island in 19 feet of water about 5.6 miles off Alaska's north shore. The island would have a footprint covering 24 acres of seafloor and an area above the surface of about 9 acres. The site lies a few miles east of the massive Prudhoe Bay oil field.
Hilcorp says it hopes to extract 60,000 to 70,000 barrels per day from up to 16 wells on the island, for a total haul of 80 million to 130 million barrels over 15 to 20 years. Oil will be conveyed via an underwater pipeline.
Regulators pointed to safety features in approving the plan, including a promise to only drill into oil-bearing rock when the Arctic is frozen and restrictions on ship traffic.
But environmentalists challenge that any cleanup efforts in the remote north would be exceedingly difficult. Noise and traffic to the island may disturb whales, seals, and other wildlife, Monsell said.
U.S. PUSHES TO END CHILDREN'S CLIMATE CHANGE SUIT
October 19, 2018
A week before the start of a trial in a case brought by 21 children who sued the U.S. government for its role in causing climate change, the government is moving aggressively to end the case.
After failing to convince the Supreme Court to end the case in July, the Justice Department returned to the court this week to ask for a second time that the suit be blocked. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, in a new 38-page filing, asked the justices again to intervene and “end this profoundly misguided suit.”
On Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted the case and has given the lawyers for the children until Wednesday to respond.
The youths contend that the U.S. government has pursued energy policies that caused climate change, despite knowing for more than 50 years that carbon emissions would destabilize the climate; they argue the failure to protect future generations from the effects of climate change violate their generation’s constitutional right to a “climate system capable of sustaining human life.”
The trial in the case of Juliana v. United States is scheduled to being Oct. 29 in Eugene, Oregon.
In a statement, Julia Olson, the youth’s co-counsel and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, expressed confidence in a statement that the trial will proceed once the justices receive the youth plaintiffs’ response to the government’s “mischaracterization” of the case.
“As the Supreme Court has recognized in innumerable cases, review of constitutional questions is better done on a full record where evidence is presented and weighed by the trier of fact,” Olson said. “This case is already about recognized fundamental rights and children’s rights of equal protection under the law.”
The government’s new appeal to the Supreme Court came as both sides await a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the government’s effort to end the case.
“We are now facing a legal case where the district court is considering a matter, the Ninth Circuit is considering the same matter, and the Supreme Court has been asked to consider the matter,” says Phil Gregory, the youth’s co-counsel. “Every legal scholar I’ve talked to says they have never seen this before. It’s unprecedented.”
In July, when the Supreme Court justices declined to intercede, calling it “premature,” they also noted the “breadth” of some of the claims were “striking,” and that there are “substantial grounds for a difference of opinion.” The justices cautioned U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken to “take these concerns into account” when moving toward trial.
On Monday, in a sweeping ruling, Aiken rejected the government’s efforts to limit the case, although granted the government’s request to dismiss President Trump as a defendant. She ordered the case to proceed to trial as scheduled.
In the government’s new filing, Francisco argued that Aiken had failed to follow the high court’s admonishment to “meaningfully narrow” the case. He also harshly criticized the lawsuit, arguing that not only has the case cost “taxpayers millions of dollars” as government lawyers prepare for the court battle, but that the lawsuit itself is merely an “attempt to redirect federal environmental and energy policies through the courts rather than through the political process.”
The government also moved this week, in a filing dated Oct. 15, to exclude climate experts from testifying for the plaintiffs because the government does not dispute their conclusions about climate change. That was a day after Trump, in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, conceded that “something’s happening” to the climate, but added: “I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP SIGNS BILL TO CLEAN UP OCEAN PLASTICS
October 12, 2018
President Trump called out other nations, including China and Japan, for “making our oceans into their landfills” when he signed legislation last week to improve efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world’s oceans.
“As president, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony. “That’s why I’m please—very pleased, I must say—to put my signature on this important legislation.”
The law, passed with bipartisan support, amends the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Act and funds the program through 2022. The law fosters efforts to clean up plastic trash from the world’s oceans and encourages federal trade negotiators to prod “leaders of nations responsible for the majority of marine debris” to improve management of waste that ends up in the oceans.
Trump agreed with Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, that trade talks with the Philippines should include plastic waste. “We’re okay with that,” he said. “I understand. A lot comes from there.”
Trump also blamed other unnamed countries that “abuse the oceans” and whose trash floats to the West Coast of the United States,” creating, he said, “a very unfair situation.”
“It’s incredible. It’s incredible when you look at it,” Trump said. “People don’t realize it, but all the time we’re being inundated by debris from other countries.”
Comparatively, the beaches of the United States are among the world’s cleanest. Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, which faces the Pacific gyre, where ocean trash collects, is the exception. But most of the world’s plastic trash collects in coastal regions and on beaches in developing nations that lack adequate municipal waste collection systems.
Japan has had for years one of the world’s highest recycling rates and earlier this year, China stopped buying the world’s trash. The United States was one of the top sellers of recycled plastic to China.
The president’s full remarks are here, and the text of the Save Our Seas Act is here.
EPA TO DISBAND AIR POLLUTION REVIEW PANEL
October 11, 2018
The Environmental Protection Agency will not continue a scientific review panel that advises the agency about safe levels of pollution in the air, the New York Times reports.
The 20-member Particulate Matter Review Panel has been made up of scientists who are experts in the health dangers of soot. That panel will no longer meet next year, though the agency declined to disclose why.
Conservation groups have complained that eliminating the panel will make it easier to roll back pollution standards or push through other changes with less regard to the impact on human health.
The agency has said that a seven-member panel will review federal air standards going forward, with the goal of more revisions by 2020. Conservationists have warned that this group currently only includes one independent researcher and may not be robust enough to protect public health.
BAN ON MINING NEAR YELLOWSTONE EXTENDED
October 8, 2018
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke extended a ban on mining in a 30,000-acre area of his home state near Yellowstone National Park. Known as Paradise Valley, that part of southwestern Montana is popular with outdoor enthusiasts and tourists and is known for pricey second homes. Attractive to mining companies in recent years, the parcel of federal land is managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
Zinke's order extends the ban on all mineral extraction on the federal land for another 20 years, the maximum allowed by law. The previous Interior secretary, Sally Jewel, had enacted a two-year ban while more studies of the area were made. Meanwhile, mining companies had been making some exploratory efforts on nearby private land.
“I fully support multiple use of public lands, but multiple use is about balance and knowing that not all areas are right for all uses. There are places where it is appropriate to mine and places where it is not. Paradise Valley is one of the areas it's not,” Zinke said when extending the ban, as reported by The Hill.
The ban was supported by Montana's entire delegation to Congress—who have also floated a bill to make it permanent—and had strong bipartisan support in the state. It was opposed by the state's mining association.
While praising the move, Aaron Weiss of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities also noted that “Secretary Zinke always seems to support conservation in his home state of Montana, while backing the most aggressive forms of industrial development in the other 49 states."
Weiss pointed to recent efforts supported by Zinke to expand mining in Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and the Boundary Waters as examples of the latter.
REPORT: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PREDICTS 7 DEGREES OF GLOBAL WARMING BY 2100
September 28, 2018
A Washington Post story highlights a startling footnote in a U.S. government agency report: a forecast that global carbon emissions will nearly double by 2100.
Trump administration officials are using the dire forecast to support a rollback of Obama-era fuel efficiency standards that would increase U.S. carbon emissions.
The draft report, recently published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), intends to justify the SAFE Vehicles Rule, the Trump administration's proposed changes to fuel efficiency standards for model year 2021-2026 passenger cars and light trucks. Trump officials would prefer to freeze these average fuel economy standards to 37 miles per gallon.
The Obama-era policy would have made these standards stricter over time, to an average of 46.7 miles per gallon for model year 2025 vehicles.
According to the NHTSA report, this change would increase these vehicles' carbon emissions by nine percent from 2021 through the end of the century, an upswing of about 7.8 billion tons of CO2. But to minimize this impact, the report emphasizes that the rollback would increase global CO2 levels by “just” 0.65 parts per million—from a baseline of 789.11 parts per million.
It's this baseline estimate that's raising eyebrows. Currently, global CO2 levels are about 410 parts per million, smashing natural CO2 records from the last 800,000 years by a third. The last time CO2 levels were this high, roughly three million years ago, sea levels were 20 feet higher than they are today.
Against this backdrop, setting a 2100 baseline of 789 parts per million is astonishing. For one, this forecast assumes that the Paris Agreement makes no dent in global CO2 levels in coming decades. The global pact calls for limiting warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, four degrees less than the NHTSA predicts. A full seven degrees would mark a dramatic twist of Earth's thermostat knob: From the height of the last ice age to now, tropical sea surface temperatures have increased by roughly that much.
In an interview with the Washington Post, MIT Sloan School of Management professor John Sterman called the forecast “a textbook example of how to lie with statistics.”
“First, the administration proposes vehicle efficiency policies that would do almost nothing [to fight climate change],” he said. “Then [the administration] makes their impact seem even smaller by comparing their proposals to what would happen if the entire world does nothing.”
The Trump administration says the rule is a necessary safety fix, arguing that it would lower the cost of newer vehicles and thus encourage people to get newer, safer cars. In an August 2018 story in the New York Times, outside experts questioned these arguments.
EPA REPEALS OBAMA-ERA METHANE RULES
September 18, 2018
This week, the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency announced final new rollbacks to Obama-era climate change policy, reducing requirements on oil and gas companies to monitor and mitigate releases of methane from wells and other operations.
Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas and regularly seeps from energy activities. Some in the industry had complained that the Obama-era rules were too burdensome.
The Interior Department is also expected to soon release a plan to return to allowing companies to intentionally flare off methane, an activity that environmentalists had said was wasteful and contributing to carbon emissions.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, praised the new changes to the New York Times. The Obama rules were "a record-keeping nightmare that was technically impossible to execute in the field,” she told the paper. Yet environmentalists warn that more leaks will lead to more pollution.
The rules allow companies to follow laxer state guidelines and decrease the time required between inspections of equipment and for repairing leaks. The 2016 rule was expected to cost the industry $530 million by 2025. Yet the Obama administration had estimated that the fuel being wasted by leaks actually costs taxpayers $330 million a year in lost natural gas royalties.
When the new EPA rule was announced attorneys general in California and New Mexico filed suit, challenging the change.
TRUMP EPA UNVEILS PLAN TO NULLIFY FEDERAL RULES ON COAL POWER PLANTS
August 21, 2018
As a candidate, one of Donald Trump’s signature promises was to weaken air pollution rules on coal-fired power plants. In a speech in West Virginia Tuesday, President Trump detailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to reverse Obama Administration rules designed to curtail coal emissions of carbon dioxide and methane that contribute to climate change.
The Trump Administration’s new plan—called the Affordable Clean Energy rule—dismantles Obama’s federal rules over all American coal plants and gives regulating authority to each state. Some states, like California, may propose even harsher targets. But others, such as coal-rich states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, are likely to loosen emissions regulations that coal industry leaders have called burdensome and expensive.
Despite legal challenges to the Obama plan, known as the Clean Power Plan, coal plants have declined in recent years. Since 2010, more than 200 American coal plants have been retired or taken offline. In that time, other energy sources including renewables like wind and solar have become more cost-effective and reliable.
Yet Trump’s rules are likely to most affect aging coal plants across the country that pollute the most, making them more cost effective to run longer.
The move is likely to have a lasting effect on climate change. The U.S. is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Obama’s Clean Power Plan had intended to cut U.S. emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. By the same measure, the Trump plan is expected to cut emissions only as much as 1.5 percent.
After the rule is submitted to the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to comment before it is finalized. Environmental groups are expected to challenge it in court.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES PLAN TO WEAKEN OBAMA-ERA FUEL ECONOMY RULES
August 2, 2018
The Trump administration announced a long-expected plan to dismantle an Obama-era policy that would have increased vehicle mileage standards for cars made over the next decade. The Obama rules were intended to limit vehicle emissions of greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change.
The vehicle emissions standards had been one of the signature policies of the Obama administration to confront climate change. They required light cars made after 2012 to become almost twice as efficient by 2025—averaging nearly 54 miles per gallon—in hopes of saving billions of barrels of oil needed to burn for fuel.
The Trump administration proposal, announced by both the Department or Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, wouldn't nix the rules entirely but
would halt the mileage targets at 34 miles per gallon by 2021. Beyond that number, some automakers complained, the targets would be too difficult to reach, and the added expense to innovate technology and alter production lines would cost jobs and increase prices for car buyers.
Other carmakers approved of the Obama rules, acknowledging that even if they were burdensome, they leveled the playing field for all automakers in all states, ensuring that no company could sell cheaper, less-efficient cars while others tried to innovate.
DOT and EPA officials cited passenger safety as their primary objective in rolling back the rules. People who owned more efficient cars would drive more, they said, putting them at greater risk of accidents. They also said that cars with better mileage would delay people from getting new cars with enhanced safety features. Some experts interviewed by the New York Times expressed skepticism at these explanations.
The Trump administration's move sets up a legal battle with more than a dozen states, led by California, that have passed their own set of higher fuel standards. Despite the relief from the Trump Administration's move, several companies have urged the administration to return to negotiations with states to agree on a uniform set of standards across the country. They argued that a fragmented system between federal and state rules, like the one Trump's rollback creates, would be a worst-case scenario.
SUPREME COURT LETS CHILDREN'S CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUIT MOVE TO TRIAL
July 30, 2018
Juliana v. United States, a lawsuit filed by 21 children against the federal government over climate change, is headed to trial later this year, after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump Administration’s efforts to derail the case.
In a four-sentence order issued July 30, Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected the government’s request that the case be stayed as “premature.” Kennedy noted that the “breadth of the (children’s) claim is striking…” But he cautioned that the complicated case presents “substantial grounds for difference of opinion” and warned the trial court to “take these concerns into account in assessing the burdens of discovery and trial…”
The trial is scheduled to begin October 29 in Eugene, Oregon.
The children’s suit, filed in federal court in 2015 by the non-profit Our Children’s Trust, alleges that the government has failed to protect Earth from the effects of climate change, putting the lives of future generations at risk and violating their basic constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.
The Obama Administration sought unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed, arguing remedies for climate change are better addressed by Congress than in court. The Trump Administration was named as a defendant in the case in January 2017. In March, Trump Administration lawyers filed the first of several attempts to have the case dismissed or delayed. None succeeded, prompting the appeal to the high court.
TRUMP OFFICIALS SET ASIDE EVIDENCE OF NATIONAL MONUMENTS' SUCCESSES
July 23, 2018
As the Trump administration downsized Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and reviewed dozens more, U.S. Department of the Interior officials dismissed evidence that the monument designations brought benefits, the Washington Post reports.
On July 16, the Interior Department's Freedom of Information Act team uploaded thousands of pages of documents that had not been completely redacted. The next day, officials took down these documents and replaced them.
The erroneously un-redacted documents contain facts that cast some monuments in a positive light. One 2017 analysis by the Bureau of Land Management mentioned that once Grand Staircase-Escalante became a national monument, the annual rate of archaeological listings in the area more than doubled, and vandalism dropped.
In December 2017, President Trump moved to shrink the monument by 46 percent.
In another document, Interior Department official Randal Bowman recommended deleting fishing data from an assessment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The administration reviewed the Atlantic Ocean monument—which President Obama created in 2016—amid concerns that the monument's ban on fishing hurt local fishers.
Bowman sought to nix data showing that from 2005 to 2014, about two-thirds of the area's shipping vessels generated less than five percent of their annual landings from the waters that became the monument.
“This section is based on information provided by NOAA and the Fishery Management Council, and so can be presumed accurate,” he wrote in a comment. “However, including all this information undercuts the case for the ban being harmful.”
According to legal experts interviewed by the Post, Trump officials could argue that the intended redactions fall under the “deliberative privilege” exemption of the Freedom of Information Act. That clause aims to protect executive branch staffers as they honestly discuss and hone policies.
TRUMP OFFICIALS PROPOSE ROLLBACKS OF ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT RULES
July 19, 2018
On Thursday, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal that would make several key changes to the Endangered Species Act—the 1973 law that has served as a bulwark against the bald eagle's extinction, among thousands of other species.
The plan calls for nixing a rule that forbids referring to the economic impacts of listing an endangered or threatened species. That said, the plan makes pains to say that determinations would still be based only on biological considerations. It also would give regulators greater freedom to avoid designating critical habitat for threatened and endangered species.
It also would tweak how the risks facing threatened species—which aren't endangered yet but could be in the foreseeable future—would be weighed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would constrain the definition of “foreseeable future” to “only so far into the future as the Services can reasonably determine that the conditions potentially posing a danger of extinction in the foreseeable future are probable.”
What's more, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed eliminating the blanket section 4(d) rule. Since the 1970s, this FWS policy gave threatened species all the protections given to endangered species, which face a more immediate risk of extinction, by default.
Unlike FWS, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service tacks on protections for threatened species one by one. The new proposal calls on FWS to adopt NOAA's case-by-case approach for future listings of threatened species. The hundreds of threatened plants and animals that currently have blanket 4(d) protections will continue to have them, according to FWS.
Already, environmental groups are strongly criticizing the plan.
“These proposals would slam a wrecking ball into the most crucial protections for our most endangered wildlife,” added Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “If these regulations had been in place in the 1970s, the bald eagle and the gray whale would be extinct today. If they’re finalized now, Zinke will go down in history as the extinction secretary.”
The proposed changes will be posted to the Federal Register in a matter of days. The Trump administration has invited public comment on the rules, which will be open for 60 days on regulations.gov after they are posted.
EPA ADMINISTRATOR SCOTT PRUITT RESIGNS
July 5, 2018
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigned on Thursday, ending the tenure of the most divisive U.S. environmental lead in decades.
Pruitt's resignation, confirmed by President Trump in a statement on Twitter, comes after months of criticism and an ever-growing pile of ethics scandals.
Media reports found that Pruitt had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in first-class flights, a $43,000 soundproof office phone booth, and more than $1,500 in fountain pens. A recent CNN report also alleges that Pruitt made his staff omit parts of his schedule from the public record.
Pruitt also caught fire for asking his staff for personal help. Pruitt reportedly asked his unprecedentedly large security detail to turn on their emergency lights as he ran late to a meal at a chic D.C. French restaurant. He also asked his detail to track down his favorite lotion, and he asked his top aides to retrieve his dry cleaning, pick up snacks, track down used hotel mattresses, and help find his wife a job.
Beyond his cavalcade of scandals, Pruitt also brought abrupt changes to U.S. environmental policy.
He halted an Obama-era request that fossil-fuel producers track methane emissions and overruled EPA scientists' plea to ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos. While Pruitt's EPA moved to make the water contaminant PFAS a national priority, officials also reportedly sought to delay a CDC report about the compound's toxicity.
The EPA under Pruitt moved hastily to end the Obama administration's signature environmental policies. Pruitt stalled the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration's effort to regulate power-plant emissions; wanted to weaken 2022-2025 car fuel economy standards; delayed the “Waters of the United States” rule for two years; and wanted to downwardly revise the “social cost of carbon,” a crucial stat when weighing the costs and benefits of fighting climate change.
Pruitt also advocated for the U.S. to leave the Paris climate accords—leaving the U.S. globally isolated on what scientists broadly agree is an environmental crisis.
In a contentious letter recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, two Harvard University researchers argue that the Trump administration's environmental policies, as championed by Pruitt, could kill an additional 80,000 people per decade when compared to prior policy.
Deputy EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, is now acting EPA administrator. He is widely expected to continue Pruitt’s policies.
WHITE HOUSE CUTS NASA CLIMATE MONITORING PROGRAM
May 9, 2018
Science magazine reports that the Trump administration has ended NASA's Carbon Monitoring System, a $10-million-per-year effort to fund pilot programs intended to improve the monitoring of global carbon emissions.
Congress directed the CMS's creation in 2010, but as Science reporter Paul Voosen notes, the March 2018 spending deal didn't specifically dedicate funds to the program—giving the White House sufficient latitude to wind it down. Researchers say that CMS-supported work is particularly relevant to the global Paris Agreement, especially for verifying whether the nations of the world are actually meeting their pledges to reduce carbon emissions.
“If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, a Tufts University climate policy expert, in an interview with Science.
The move marks the latest efforts of the Trump administration, which has rejected the Paris Agreement and an array of prior U.S. climate policies, to downsize NASA's climate science program. The White House has repeatedly called for the elimination of CMS and several other NASA climate missions, including the planned PACE, OCO-3, and CLARREO Pathfinder instruments. Trump officials also advocate the shutdown of the Earth-viewing instruments aboard DSCOVR, which have taken high-res pictures of our planet's sunlit half nearly every hour since July 2015.
Despite the closure of CMS, NASA will continue to operate several climate-monitoring satellites, and the agency is scheduled to launch two climate instruments to the International Space Station by the end of 2018. “The winding down of the CMS research program does not curb NASA’s ability or commitment to monitoring carbon and its effects on our changing planet," said NASA spokesperson Steve Cole in a statement to National Geographic.
Yet researchers contend that without CMS's support, research into how to make sense of these data will slow.
“The topic of climate mitigation and carbon monitoring is maybe not the highest priority now in the United States,” said University of Maryland climate scientist George Hurtt, the CMS science team leader, in an interview with Science. “But it is almost everywhere else.”
Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly attributed a quote to Harvard University scientist Daniel Jacob. The quote is actually from University of Maryland scientist George Hurtt.
EPA ISSUES CONTROVERSIAL RULE ON SCIENCE 'TRANSPARENCY'
April 24, 2018
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt proposed a rule Tuesday that would only allow the agency to consider in its rule making scientific studies for which the underlying data are made available publicly. “The science that we use is going to be transparent. It’s going to be reproducible,” Pruitt told reporters.
Industry and conservative groups have called for this change for some time, while some environmental groups warn that it could reduce the EPA's ability to consider all the evidence available when making rules on tough questions like power plant emissions and the safety of everything from pesticides to consumer products.
In a letter, nearly 1,000 scientists (many of whom used to work at the EPA) asked Pruitt to abandon the proposal, which they said “would greatly weaken EPA's ability to comprehensively consider the scientific evidence.” Much of the data that would be excluded is based on reviews of personal health information, which is often not publicly available because of privacy laws or practical challenges.
“This proposal would mean throwing out the studies we rely on to protect the public, for no good reason,” said Betsy Southerland, a longtime EPA scientist, in a press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This would have an enormous and negative impact on the EPA’s ability to enforce the law and protect people’s health. Administrator Pruitt can’t carry out the basic responsibilities of his job if he insists that his agency ignore the evidence.”
The rule change is subject to a 30-day public comment period.
THREATENED SPECIES PROTECTION RULE UNDER REVIEW
April 2, 2018
The White House is currently reviewing a regulation that some environmental groups fear could nix protections granted to nearly 300 threatened species.
In a surprise rule change submitted on Monday, the U.S. Department of the Interior has proposed removing what's called the “blanket section 4(d) rule.” Since the 1970s, this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) policy has stated that by default, threatened species receive the full protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The ESA affords wide-ranging protections to species on the brink of extinction, barring everything from outright poaching to coming too close to the species in the wild. These restrictions don't automatically apply to threatened species, but section 4(d) of the ESA says that departments can protect threatened species at their discretion.
Historically, different departments have used this discretion in different ways. By default, FWS's blanket section 4(d) rule gives threatened species every ESA protection, which regulators then clarify and whittle down. When the National Marine Fisheries Service lists a threatened species, however, it adds protections bit by bit.
The proposed removal of the blanket section 4(d) rule concerns environmental groups because it's possible that the move would jeopardize protections for hundreds of threatened species, which aren't yet facing the threat of extinction but could in the future.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, 294 species listed as threatened by the FWS are afforded protections only because of the blanket rule. The affected species include the northern spotted owl, the southern sea otter, the spotted seal, as well as eight species of coral and numerous plants.
“How are they going to deal with the species that are already listed as threatened?” asks Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “I think that's pretty critical, because there's no way they can publish 300 individual rules ... This certainly looks like a regulatory rollback.”
That said, the rule change's impact remains unclear. The proposed regulation hasn't been released, and once it is, it will be subject to a period of public comment. The Interior Department has not yet responded to National Geographic's emailed questions about the proposed rule change.
“The Center for Biological Diversity thinks it's the worst-case scenario—it's hard for me to assume that,” says Defenders of Wildlife vice president Bob Dreher, an FWS associate director during the Obama administration. “We are of course concerned, and we're going to be watching it very, very carefully.”
In gearing up for the rule change, the Trump administration appears to be responding to two legal petitions filed in 2016 by the Pacific Legal Foundation—a conservative public-interest law firm—on behalf of the Washington Cattlemen's Association and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
The groups argue that by giving threatened species all ESA protections as a default, the blanket rule functionally eliminates the distinction between endangered and threatened species. They say the arrangement illegally flouts Congress and penalizes private landowners.
Jonathan Wood, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, maintains that rescinding the blanket rule won't hurt conservation. He argues that if threatened species have fewer protections than endangered species, then private landowners have an incentive to help endangered species recover to threatened status—since the upgrade in status removes onerous regulations. (Read more about the debate over the Endangered Species Act.)
“Recovery for endangered species is abysmally low ... By varying the protections, you better align the incentives of the property owners with the incentives of the endangered species,” he says. “Ideally, we boost that recovery rate.”
Environmental groups and Wood disagree vehemently on the ESA's efficacy. But they agree on one major point: the text of the regulation may take months to be released, and until then, it's unclear how threatened species will be treated.
“Without seeing the proposed rule and the reasons it gives, it's hard to say too much,” says Wood.
That said, Dreher offers a word of caution to the Department of the Interior: “If they take an approach which leaves threatened species arbitrarily unprotected, you can be sure that we and other organizations will sue.”
EPA STARTS ROLLBACK OF CAR EMISSIONS STANDARDS
April 2, 2018
In a press release, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the U.S. government would revisit the Obama administration's fuel efficiency standards for cars and light-duty trucks—the first step in a rollback of one of the U.S.'s biggest efforts to curb carbon emissions.
In July 2011, President Obama announced he would tighten regulations of vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, with rules that were first finalized in August 2012. Under Obama-era policy, cars and light-duty trucks would be required to have average fuel efficiencies equivalent to 54.5 miles per gallon by model year 2025.
About a sixth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2016 came from passenger cars and light-duty trucks. Overall, the Obama program would've reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 6 billion metric tons—more than the total CO2 the U.S. emitted in 2016.
The EPA committed to finishing a midterm evaluation of the 2022-2025 standards by no later than April 1, 2018. On January 12, 2017, outgoing Obama EPA administrator Gina McCarthy finalized the evaluation and reaffirmed the stringent emissions standards.
At the time, car manufacturers argued that the 2022-2025 standards were unrealistic, expensive, and politically rushed. The Trump administration has enthusiastically echoed these sentiments; it restarted the midterm evaluation in March 2017.
“The Obama administration's determination was wrong,” Pruitt said in a statement. “Obama’s EPA cut the Midterm Evaluation process short with politically charged expediency, made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.”
Automakers struck a guardedly pleased tone in releases about the announcement, seemingly leery that they may be getting more rollbacks out of the Trump EPA than they originally bargained for. Already, environmental and public health groups are voicing fierce opposition.
“Starting a process to weaken clean car standards marks yet another step backward from the fight to curb climate change,” said Harold P. Wimmer, the national president and CEO of the American Lung Association, in a statement. “Climate change poses serious threats to millions of people, especially to some of the most vulnerable Americans, including children, older adults and those living with chronic diseases such as asthma.”
“Pruitt’s rollback of the EPA clean car standards is a U-turn in the fight against climate change. We don’t know exactly how far the agency will back-track until they publish new standards, but we can be sure that it will make achieving a low-carbon transportation system more difficult and likely more expensive,” wrote Luke Tonachel, the clean vehicles director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement.
Globally, lowering U.S. emissions standards could bolster other countries to weaken their own emissions standards. Within the U.S., a rollback would set up a legal trench war between the EPA and the state of California. Under a waiver it received at the dawn of the EPA, California has the authority to set its own, more stringent emissions standards. Twelve other states and the District of Columbia—in all, a third of the U.S. population—follow California's lead.
“We’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the administration’s war on our environment,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a statement. “California didn’t become the sixth-largest economy in the world by spectating.”
ZINKE OFFERS SUPPORT FOR GRIZZLIES IN NORTH CASCADES
March 23, 2018
In a move that pleased conservationists and infuriated cattlemen, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced his support for efforts to return the grizzly bear to the North Cascades ecosystem.
"The grizzly bear is part of the environment, as it once was here. It's part of a healthy environment," he said according to The Seattle Times.
Zinke said that by the end of 2018, U.S. officials would complete a plan for returning the grizzly bear to the North Cascades, a rugged ecosystem that straddles the U.S. state of Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that fewer than 50 grizzly bears now live in the region, which is isolated from other grizzly populations in North America.
In 2013, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that the North Cascades grizzly bear warranted an endangered listing under the Endangered Species Act. The following year, the Seattle Times reports that the Obama administration announced a three-year recovery study. In 2017, the study was halted; now, with Zinke's support, it will presumably continue.
FEMA EXPELS "CLIMATE CHANGE" FROM STRATEGIC PLAN
March 16, 2018
NPR reports that the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has stricken “climate change” and associated verbiage from its strategic plan, on the heels of one of the most expensive years of natural disasters in modern U.S. history.
The plan, published on March 15, says that one of the agency’s major strategic goals is to “ready the nation for catastrophic disasters.” As NPR noted, it does discuss the potential for rising disaster costs:
Disaster costs are expected to continue to increase due to rising natural hazard risk, decaying critical infrastructure, and economic pressures that limit investments in risk resilience. As good stewards of taxpayer dollars, FEMA must ensure that our programs are fiscally sound. Additionally, we will consider new pathways to long-term disaster risk reduction, including increased investments in pre-disaster mitigation.
In a statement to NPR, FEMA Public Affairs Director William Booher said that “this strategic plan fully incorporates future risks from all hazards regardless of cause.”
In the plan, FEMA does not elaborate on the causes of “rising natural hazard risk,” which include human-caused climate change. As National Geographic previously reported, two recent studies found that the record rainfall from Hurricane Harvey—which cost roughly $125 billion—got a 15-percent boost thanks to climate change. The studies also found that climate change roughly tripled the odds of a storm of Harvey’s intensity.
The threats of climate change featured in FEMA strategic plans drafted under the Obama administration, as well as earlier ones.
In a 2008 strategic plan drafted under the George W. Bush administration, then-FEMA director R. David Paulison said that future years “will likely present our nation with equally challenging events, including technological incidents, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or extreme weather events spawned by global warming.”
EPA MULLS SHAKE-UP TO ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH PROGRAM
February 26, 2018
The Trump administration is thinking about reorganizing an EPA group that funds research on children’s health and environmental health disparities affecting minorities and the poor.
According to the proposal, the EPA would consolidate its National Center for Environmental Research (NCER), a branch of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, with two other offices related to grant-making. The combined office would field Freedom of Information Requests, manage EPA records, and administer grants.
In a statement to Earther, EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman said that the move is intended to make the agency more efficient. She added that the management of research grants would continue and that none of NCER’s current staff would be fired.
When news of the reorganization first broke, some raised concerns that NCER’s work would fall by the wayside. Currently, NCER oversees EPA’s STAR (Science to Achieve Results) program, which issues grants and fellowships to outside environmental researchers. STAR funding helps support the U.S.’s Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers, which examine pollution’s effects on children’s health.
In 2017, STAR earned acclaim from the National Academies—the U.S.’s preeminent scientific body—for its support of high-quality science, including work showing that infants could be exposed to arsenic via rice cereal. Yet from 2002 to 2016, STAR’s budget declined by more than 70 percent (adjusting for inflation) to $36 million, E&E News reports. In its FY2019 budget request, the Trump EPA called for STAR’s elimination.
In an interview with National Geographic, a senior EPA official said that the reorganized office would continue STAR if Congress funds it. The official added that new STAR grants would probably dovetail with the EPA’s priorities under administrator Scott Pruitt, which the agency laid out in its 2018-2022 strategic plan.
Pruitt’s “back-to-basics” plan calls for a focus on maintaining air quality, implementing recent chemical-safety reforms, funding infrastructure for drinking water, and accelerating the cleanup of Superfund sites.
Missing from the document is any mention of climate change or carbon dioxide, points of emphasis in Obama-era EPA strategic plans.
TRUMP PROPOSES CUTS TO CLIMATE AND CLEAN-ENERGY PROGRAMS
February 12, 2018
In its FY2019 budget and addendum, the Trump administration has proposed sweeping rollbacks to U.S. programs designed to study and mitigate the effects of climate change, as well as cuts to research on renewable energy.
At this point, the budget is merely an opening bid in negotiations with Congress;
last year, lawmakers largely ignored similar proposed cuts. Nevertheless, the budget provides insight into the White House's priorities.
For instance, the EPA budget suggests eliminating the environmental agency's climate-change research program, which currently costs the agency $16 million per year. In addition, the EPA has proposed axing several voluntary emissions-reductions programs and STAR, which funds environmental research and graduate students.
